One health blogger's change of heart over Pepsi Refresh

My readers know by now that I am not exactly a fan of PepsiCo's mega-marketing campaign disguised as philanthropy known as the Pepsi Refresh Project. As I wrote about previously, the nation's largest food company is exploiting schoolchildren as young as age 6 in an effort to brand itself as the world's savior.

Even  healthy food projects are lining up to feed at the trough of Pepsi Refresh, without a hint of shame that these corporate, tax-deductible donations rely on sales of Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

So I was surprised and disappointed when I noticed fellow health blogger, Megan Yarbrough post to Twitter a call to vote for a Pepsi Refresh project. Because I know we are usually on the same page, I reached out to her privately with a direct message and asked that she not promote this awful program. She responded immediately, acknowledging my concern and recently posted to her blog about how I changed her mind. Here is that eloquent post in its entirety:

Too noisy to save the environment? Frito-Lay responds to SunChips compostable bag debacle

These days, many companies--and especially food companies--are falling over each other to prove their green cred to consumers. But given the usual challenges of trying to save the planet while you're destroying it, most efforts amount to a whole lot of greenwashing.

So when Frito-Lay announced last week that its SunChips compostable bag was a bust due to complaints that the bag was too noisy, the company found itself on the receiving end of some well-deserved, internet-fueled snark. One of the snarkiest came from Change.org's Sustainable Food Editor Sarah Parsons, who writes:

The switcheroo came after Americans complained about the bags' noise level—the little sacks apparently cause quite the ruckus as folks stick their paws in and out to grab fistfuls of chips. In the past year alone, SunChips sales decreased by more than 11 percent, mostly due to the boisterous bags. A Facebook group called "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag" boasts more than 44,500 fans. Apparently a SunChips bag that drowns out the sound of one's own chip-crunching was very disconcerting for a populace that's come to expect a more subtle rustling from its potato chip sacks.